


call me by my name (and by god, you will know it.)

by thychesters



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Exposition Heavy, F/M, Gen, Introspection, elena-centric bc she needs it, headcanon heavy, honestly tho how can you not love elena fisher, ja feel, spanning over the course of the series and before, the consideration of legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 17:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12173727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thychesters/pseuds/thychesters
Summary: like sands through the hour glass, these are the days of our lives.Or, Elena Fisher wonders where she stands on this earth and what mark she's left upon it. An introspective look into the debate of legacy spanning pre-series to the epilogue.





	call me by my name (and by god, you will know it.)

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted from tumblr with some minor tweaks, changed from second- to third-person, and any mistakes are my own. headcanon-based in parts, and subject to some change and alteration. at best, parts of this may end up franksteined into other upcoming pieces, so be on the lookout for those as this is dismantled and sold for scrap, haha.
> 
> i hesitate to add the nathan drake/elena fisher tag because it's really only heavy-handed hints. (btw: they're married. a shocking revelation, i know.)
> 
> certain moments of the series have admittedly been glossed over, but the point remains that elena fisher deserves better.

Dad asks her what she wants to be when she grows up. She dwells on it for a minute before she tells him she wants to be Spider-Man, but she’s also eight and doesn’t put much stock into it. Last week she wanted to train elephants. 

He tells her that’s all fine and well, but doesn’t sound very safe, what with that toxic waste and all. _Radioactive spiders,_ she says, and frowns when he reminds her that she doesn’t like spiders very much, does she, Elena Louise, because he’s not wrong. Mom tells her to go play the piano a little bit before Mrs. Manson comes by, and she hasn't been practicing, has she. She has, sort of, mostly, but she's not overly fond of the piano and Mrs. Manson’s half-deaf, so if she skipped a couple notes or something it’s not like she’d notice, anyhow. But it makes mom happy and Elena kind of likes that _dun dun dun_ _dun_ part of that one song she started learning last week.

One night dad tucks her in, talks to her about legacy, about what mark she wants to leave on the world, no matter how small, asks what she wants to be when she grows up, and she spends an hour staring at those glow-in-the-dark stickers on her ceiling after he shuts the door.

Maybe, she thinks, if she's lucky her legacy will be on a Spider-Man scale. She'll get to play the hero, change the world, do something about it.

Maybe, she thinks, around her senior year of college, her legacy will be on the smaller scale. She graduates Magna Cumme Laude, dated two guys all year, and managed not to tear all of her hair out. She poses with mom and dad for pictures, with her roommate, with grandad who came all the way downstate for it, but her hand’s clutched around that folder they gave her right after shaking her hand and she's restless. It’s not enough. She needs to get out and see the world, she tells dad, she needs to explore it before she settles down to one small pocket of it, lets the rest of the world pass her by as she sits on the side of the road and idles.

She thinks about backpacking through Europe, about hostels and depending on strangers, of capturing memories with a quick click and a roll of film. Her parents don’t look overly pleased with the notion, tell her she didn’t spend all those years in school for nothing, and she has that degree to use, after all. Maybe she should go in the future, once she's worked a little and saved some. It’s journalism with a minor in history, she tells them. What’s the point in having it if she doesn’t explore enough to use it?

A few weeks after graduation she spends a weekend with her college roommate, plying themselves with too much tequila while she regales her with tales of Brian, that guy she fucked once, or did she do that, or was that Reggie, and in that case who the fuck is Reggie? Somehow in-between shitting on the mysterious Reggie and lamenting the job market they end up discussing some reality survival show she's only ever watched a couple of times, and Rebecca goads her into going for it, because it’s not like she has anything to lose.

Maybe, she thinks, this is her legacy. Her fifteen minutes of fame, swatting away bugs and trying not to end up with a staph infection in front of cameras and crewmen watching her every move. Mom and dad don’t appear too pleased with the notion, too worried about her safety, but she poses it like this is her chance to explore, sate that curiosity, and it’s not like she had a job lined up immediately after school, anyway.

Afterwards, when she ends up sent home and sleeps in her own bed for the first time in what feels like a decade, maybe, she thinks, that’ll be her legacy. Or, maybe, she can parlay those winnings into a legacy of her own.

She ends up with a show mostly on a wing and a prayer, like _“it sounds like a good time, but I have no idea if this will work."_  It feels like it's more based on name and appearance on a reality show more so than her actual skill set, much to her chagrin, but Elena Fisher's not above proving her mettle.

She gets to travel, explore, and the usage of her degree seems to appease mom and dad. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and she spends a great deal of the duration by herself, maybe having someone else lend a hand in the editing process, but the bulk of the filming and the production and the work is all her. And so is all the falling on her face three times as she discusses Aztec temples, and the tumbling she does down muddy hills as she discusses vikings. The footage is cut out of the episodes themselves, but as she watches herself slide through mud and tall grass on her butt, maybe, she thinks, that is her legacy.

Or maybe, she thinks, her legacy is the call she gets to Panama while she worries about the idea of cancelation looming over her head, because she _almost_ found her footing and that writer’s strike isn’t helping matters any. Sir Francis Drake’s coffin, and all she has to do is get the network to fund the expedition. Wallace wishes her luck, and the woman next to her on the plane keeps side-eying her in that nasty way of hers as she nearly bounces out of her seat. She isn't without her reservations though, because she's done her research, and while easy on this eyes the name Nathan Drake is nothing short of just a little fishy. But, she digresses, because at the very least it's the extra little kick the show needs to get it back on track.

Unearthing the tomb of a legendary explorer. Maybe, she thinks, this will be her legacy. Maybe the world will know Elena Fisher.

Or maybe, she thinks, the world will know Elena Fisher as the same woman who got left on a dock, who got her boat blown up and her lead waving to her as his friend steered them away.

Maybe her legacy will be the way she tracked him down, punched him square in the jaw and was about to demand recompense when men with guns went dashing by and all thoughts of giving him what for left her entirely. 

She finds some consolation in the notion that Nate was off relieving himself when she dry heaved, allotted herself that moment of weakness because she killed a man, heard that cry of pain and that gurgle before nothing at all. _Point and shoot_ sounds all fine and well until she pulls the trigger, until she hears the resulting impact and the _thud_ that leads to silence. Back on the boat it’d been different, because she could tell what shots landed did little more than maim, and he was more steeled nerves and precision while she just hoped this wasn’t how she died.

Maybe this will be her legacy, the world will learn Elena Fisher’s a murderer who shot men and then threw up afterwards because the experience freaked her out. She take some solace in the fact that when Nate comes back to the little base camp they've set up for the night, he doesn’t say anything and only offers her water.

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy, the one she tries not to tell others about, is how the experience gets under her skin, how she stands in the shower for a solid hour after they get back to Panama, stands under the spray until the water goes from hot to cold, murky to soapy to clear, and when she steps out her skin’s bright pink. There are lingering bruises from the island, from being manhandled and manhandling back. There’s a bruise purpling at the base of her ribcage in the shape of Navarro’s fist, and she crawls into bed before the silence gets to her and then she goes slinking down the hall to Sully’s room, or Nate’s room, and then Nate answers the door, and she almost wants to tell him that being on her own at the moment freaks her out a little, and part of her hates herself for it.

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy will be in how she gets caught up more in ideas than in realities.

Or, maybe, she thinks, somewhere in-between Nepal and home, her legacy will be the notion that all actions have consequences. 

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy will be that she is too headstrong, too self-righteous and naïve, and there is blood on her hands for it. 

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy will culminate in Jeff Wynis, as she watches his expression flicker from pain, to shock, to terror, to resignation that bleeds into absolutely nothing at all. He's only here because of her, and there’s a gun to her head and all she can think is that he shouldn’t have been here in the first place, she said she didn’t want a cameraman, didn’t need one, and he looks back at her, wide-eyed with a bullet hole in his head.

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy is lost footage, is dead crew members and actual stories that sound remarkably like lies.

And he dies for what, so she can run away again? So she can save her own skin and not think about recovering his body again until after, mourning and preparing a speech for his family when she flies back with a box of ashes?

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy is a village burnt to the ground, its inhabitants slaughtered because she was foolish enough to set up camp there. It’s the displaced people, the dead livestock, and the child clutching to her leg as she cries because she can’t find her mother.

Or maybe, she thinks, her legacy is going to be her death in a mystical city. Her legacy is her naivety getting the best of her, thinking she can save a dead man and the taste of blood and metal. Chloe jams her fingers inside her, pokes around like she’s digging out organs to sell on the black market because fat lot of good they’ll do her now, and fat lot of good they’ll do her all shredded. 

Maybe this is her legacy, how she dies, weak and half-coherent, lying bloody and cold on the stone walkway of a city that isn’t supposed to exist, and if Chloe’s talking to her, she has no idea what she’s saying. Maybe she’s saying goodbye, maybe she’s saying Nate’s dead, maybe she’s not saying anything at all.

Maybe, she thinks, as she flickers back into consciousness, hears the angry roar of battle as Chloe hoists her to her feet, drags her across stone and calls her sunshine, this is it. This is her legacy. This is how Elena Fisher goes out, not in a blaze of glory or with adventure, but with a whimper and a gurgle. 

She’s slick with blood, and that’s her blood, streaked across her jacket and palms, and there’s too much of it. Her thoughts consist of something like screaming and _please, god, don’t let me die here_. If she spots her tears she’s kind enough not to say anything, likely assumes they’re from the pain she can still register, but what she doesn’t realize is that the underlying reason is sheer terror. She doesn’t need to know that in this moment Elena Fisher is afraid to die, and moreover to do so alone.

Maybe, she thinks, this is her legacy, her fears overcomes her, and then Chloe loses her grip and she can hear Nate in the background. So, perhaps, this is how she dies after all.

Or maybe, she's just extremely lucky and her legacy is getting hitched on a whim. It’s nothing like the elaborate wedding she once considered as a child, entertained for a brief period as she held her mother’s veil with reverence and thought of her potential beau. 

In layman’s terms it’s a shotgun wedding, an affair they breeze through with vows she stumbles through because she's punch drunk and almost doesn’t remember when she's actual drunk, after. Maybe her legacy is being foolhardy, thinking this could work, they could do this, and they ride those coattails for as long as they can, until the fabric wears thin and frays, and suddenly banter crescendos into arguments, into yelling, lapses into silence and one-word answers and non-answers to fill the void between them, and the final answer comes from a single, brief, to-the-point message from Sully: _I’m sorry._

So this is her legacy, she thinks, poised on the edge of her bed (no longer theirs), clutching her phone in an apartment that's the quietest it's ever been, but at once so loud. Louder, still, when Sully is the one to come collect his things, not Nate.

Or maybe, she thinks, her legacy is her naivety spiking again, crawling up from the depths as he crawls onto the couch, and she wants to squeeze her eyes shut and tell him to stop talking, never talk again, and it reaches a fever pitch when he takes her hand and tells her he’s sorry.

He’s sorry, she's sorry. She wonders if any apologies were accepted, or meant anything, or simply spoken.

He doesn't have his ring. She does. That alone speaks volumes, and she pulls her hand away because she wasn't the one who gave up, she wasn't the one who walked out, but that opens up too much to hurt to say.

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy is that she opens her door and risks it happening all over again.

Or maybe she gets too complacent, shifts into a life neither one of them were truly prepared for, as far as she know. But then there’s “Malaysia, not Malaysia,” and it’s lies and it’s lies and it’s _lies_ , and they were supposed to be beyond that, supposed to trust one another, intrinsically, be partners, and she's cold all over again, like that time back in Yemen she thought for a fleeting moment he’d kept his ring, gave it the same value she did.

What she doesn’t tell him is that it’s the first time in four years that she's taken her ring off, standing in the middle of the parking lot like she doesn’t know which way is up. Sully stands behind her, watches her stuff it into her pocket and then pull it out again, and asks if she wants a drink.

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy is Sully telling her she has the patience of a saint, but most saints don’t have the soiled palms she does or have panic attacks in the shower.

Maybe, she thinks, that is her legacy. A culmination of all the shitty things she's seen in her life time. A look back through the years, all the shit storms and terrible, no good, very bad things, and reminding herself that at least she didn’t do that, not those terrible things. Other people maybe have, but she didn’t, so kudos.

Or maybe, as she's washed the blood from her hands, squared her shoulders and her resolve, there’s a screaming baby girl in her arms, beet red and tiny and demanding all her attention, she thinks, _this is it._

Maybe, she thinks, her legacy wasn’t only hers after all.


End file.
